New research from the American Museum of Natural History shows that specialized diets arose independently

It’s confirmed: Even though flatback turtles dine on fish, shrimp, and mollusks, they are closely related to primarily herbivorous green sea turtles. New genetic research carried out by Eugenia Naro-Maciel, a Marine Biodiversity Scientist at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History, and colleagues clarifies our understanding of the evolutionary relationships among all seven sea turtle species.

“The evolution of a specialized diet appears to have occurred three times, independently,” says Naro-Maciel. “Many sea turtles are carnivorous generalists. However, hawksbills tend to have a diet of glass—they eat toxic sponges—while the leatherback consumes jellyfish and the green grazes mainly on algae or sea grass.” Each of the species with specialized diets is positioned uniquely in the evolutionary tree.

Naro-Maciel and colleagues confirmed that one major group of sea turtles includes sister species flatback and green turtles (one carnivorous and the other herbivorous), while another clade is formed by the hawksbill, loggerhead, Kemp’s Ridley and Olive Ridley turtles. The leatherback is confirmed as the most basal of all the sea turtles, and the Eastern Pacific green turtle—thought by some to be a separate species—falls within the green turtle species. The branches of this evolutionary tree can be calibrated with time using the new phylogeny and DNA data: Even though the ancestor of all sea turtles arose over 100 million years ago, the separation between the flatback and green turtles happened about 34 million years ago.

Determining the evolutionary relationships among sea turtles as well as the species identity of different populations of this highly migratory group of animals has implications for conservation. All sea turtles are included on the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species, some of them as critically endangered, and an accurate understanding of this highly migratory group is important.

“These research results are another example of the importance of using systematics and taxonomy as a way to prioritize conservation efforts and strategies,” says George Amato, Director of the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the Museum and an author of the article. “Only with these detailed studies can we better conserve the naturally occurring evolutionary novelty and patterns of genetic diversity for endangered species.”

High mortality of loggerhead turtles due to bycatch, human consumption and strandings at Baja California Sur, Mexico, 2003 to 2007: here.

Protesters campaign against the visit of far-right French politician Jean Marie Le Pen to the Midlands where he was invited by the British National Party. The BNP relocated their meeting as a result but the peace protesters followed. Organised by peace, synagogue, church and mosque groups with Unite Against Fascism.

VIENNA – – Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider was more than three times over the legal alcohol limit when he crashed his car and was killed at the weekend, his party said Wednesday.

“It is true that governor Joerg Haider had 1.8 grammes of alcohol in his blood at the time of the accident,” his successor as head of the Alliance for the Future of Austria, Stefan Petzner, told APA news agency.

The legal limit in Austria is 0.5 grammes of alcohol per litre of blood.

Haider, 58, was doing more than twice the 70 kilometre (43 mile) per hour speed limit when he crashed in the early hours of Saturday after leaving a night club in Carinthia province, prosecutors said.

A wave of student protest is sweeping Austria. Students at the Fine Arts University in the capital, Vienna, began it by occupying their college after the principal announced fee increases and changes to course funding: here.

Secret papers, issued to CIA in 2003 and 2004, were prompted by fears of backlash

By JOBY WARRICK

Oct. 14, 2008, 11:43PM

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency’s use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques against al-Qaida suspects — documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency’s interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.

Scientists have uncovered what they are calling the oldest full-body impression of a flying insect, possibly an ancient mayfly.

“[The fossil] captures a moment in time over 300 million years ago when a flying insect just happened to land on a damp, muddy surface leaving almost a perfect impression of its body behind,” said researcher Jake Benner, a paleontologist at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

Benner and Tufts geologist Richard Knecht discovered the insect imprint in a shale and sandstone outcropping hidden in a wooded field behind a strip mall in North Attleboro, Mass. Knecht had learned of the site while reading a master’s thesis written in 1929.

With a length of about three inches (eight centimeters), the 310 million-year-old impression did not include wings. But Knecht and Benner said the insect’s body structure was similar to that of primitive flying insects. In addition, “there are no walking tracks leading up to the body impression, indicating that it came from above,” Benner said.

“We can tell from the imprint that it has a very squat position when it lands,” said researcher Michael Engel, an entomologist at the University of Kansas. “Its legs are sprawled and its belly is pressed down. The only group that does that today is the mayfly.”

A stream of reports in the last 24 hours of a tense stand-off and impending confrontation between a ‘Minga’, a gathering of social movements, and the Colombian state. The conflict point is the occupation by 9,000 people of the Pan American highway in the south west. The police have attacked and in the last 24 hours killed 2 and injured over 20 protestors, but at time of writing this force have been unable to dislodge the blockade.

ONIC, the national indigenous movement reports that 18 indigenous peoples are at the point of extinction: “The systematic and repeated violations of indigenous peoples rights are evidenced in the assassination of 1,253 indigenous persons and the displacement of at least 53,885 indigenous persons in the last 6 years, the period of Álvaro Uribe‘s presidency”. ONIC has called a National Mobilisation of Indigenous and Popular Resistance with protests all over the country.

The special characteristic of the mobilisation in the south west departments of Valle and Cauca is the coming together in direct action of the mostly African descendant cane cutters, who have been on strike since 15 September (see previous Urgent Action), and the militant indigenous groups who have been occupying land to reclaim it as Madre Tierra, Mother Earth.